Smoke over Kyiv's Independence Square, 2014

ST. PETERSBURG, June 17. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks that the West supported the coup in Ukraine to justify the existence of NATO.

"After the ‘Arab Spring’ they have already moved closer to our borders. Why did they need to support the coup in Ukraine? There is a complicated internal political situation there, and the opposition that is in power today would have most likely come to power by democratic means, through elections, as well. That’s it, we would have worked with them just like we worked with the authorities before (former Ukrainian) President (Viktor) Yanukovych," Putin said on Friday at a plenary session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"No, they had to take it to the coup with victims, to cause bloodshed, civil war, to intimidate the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine’s south-east and in Crimea. What for?" he asked adding that Moscow "just had to take measures to protect certain groups of population," he continued.

The president noted that the West continued to "spin this spiral, to escalate." The Russian leader thinks that such actions were dictated by the necessity "to justify the very existence of the North Atlantic Alliance. "They need an external enemy, an external opponent - or why else would this organization be needed?" Putin wondered. "There is no Warsaw Pact anymore, no Soviet Union, whom are they (NATO) against?" Putin wondered.

"If we continue to act in the framework of this logic - escalate and build up efforts to intimidate each other - we will soon come to the Cold War," he said. "We have an absolutely different logic, it is aimed at cooperation and search for compromises," he concluded.